Category: Globalisation

The rise of China promises a fundamental change in the world. The way China is used to operating is so far outside how the West is used to operating that it is hard to engage with. One of the things fuelling anxiety over globalisation is that this is happening beneath the radar. The change isn’t necessarily bad, but unfamiliarity breeds fear.

China emerging as the world’s major power, and changing the way things are done.

In the west, we are use to thinking of ourselves as global powers. In our own terms, we have been the world’s major economic powers, and have proud colonial histories. In reality, those colonial histories are murky, and we have only had dominance because of widespread poverty. The rise in the economic might of China and India has gone with increased living standards: the only thing that could stop a major re-alignment is the sort of humanitarian catastrophe which we should see as morally repugnant.

But change is not just about economic might: it is also about how nations naturally do things. The western mindset that has been dominant is not the only way.